Sermon - A Three Dimensional Lent

Sieger Koder - After the fire came a gentle whisper

A sermon given at Choral Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 11th February 2024 based on the first lesson from 1 Kings 19.1-16.

Premiered in Birmingham the year before Mendelssohn died at the age of just thirty eight, his oratorio Elijah is considered his musical triumph and the pinnacle of nineteenth century choral music. It remains a staple of the repertoire here in England -  performed just a week or so ago to critical acclaim by the LSO.

 

A master of orchestration, to say that Mendelssohn had a flair for the dramatic is an understatement. Listen to his ‘Hebrides Overture’ or ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ and you can hear why it is said he inspired the composers of film scores, writing decades later - some taking their cues rather directly. Many hear a connection between the opening notes of the overture of Elijah and the theme tune to Jaws! 

 

Mendelssohn, whose family converted to Christianity from Judaism when he was a child, was inspired to write Elijah following the success of his first oratorio, St Paul. It took ten years to complete. 

 

In a letter to a friend, he said “I imagined Elijah as a real, mighty prophet, through and through, of the kind we could really do with today: Strong and zealous, yes, but also bad-tempered, angry and brooding - in contrast to the rabble you find…in court or in the populace.”  

 

Elijah’s wholeness of character - in contrast to what Mendelssohn saw as the one dimensional public figures of his day - is revealed across the two parts of his oratorio. 

 

The first half is based on events in chapters seventeen and eighteen of the First Book of Kings. From the opening notes, we encounter the “strong and zealous” Elijah. 

 

Unusually, the performance begins not with an overture, but with Elijah declaring his prophecy of drought to King Ahab - as divine judgement for his people turning to worship the false Gods of Baal. A move which, in the scriptures, seems to hang on the influence of the King’s wife, Jezebel. 

 

Elijah escapes to the desert before he can be arrested, where he is sustained by food brought to him by ravens until God sends him to Zarephath. Here, he encounters a woman who feeds him with bread from a never-ending supply of flour and oil. When her son falls ill and dies, it is through Elijah’s intercession that he is brought back to life.

The drama is a librettist’s dream – and there’s more…. 

 

Three years after declaring his prophecy of drought to King Ahab, Elijah meets Obadiah, the head of the royal household, who has come into the wilderness to search for grazing land amidst the parched ground. 

 

Obadiah brings Ahab to meet with Elijah - and the King reluctantly agrees to a contest on top of Mount Carmel. The priests of the gods of Baal - numbered in the hundreds – are to pit their wits against Elijah in a contest to see who could summon fire upon a herd of sacrificial bulls. To put an end to the question as to where the divine power really lies. Despite trying every trick in the book, the priests of the Gods of Baal are unable to summon the smallest spark. But Elijah’s prayer to the one God of Israel is answered. Fire rains down from the heavens. 

 

The victorious Elijah is on top of the world. The priests of Baal are sent down to the valley below and slain. The drought is over and the rain clouds return. 

 

Mendelssohn ends the first part of the oratorio with a rousing thanksgiving to God, sung by the chorus.  

 

 

Hearing our first lesson this evening is like walking in to the second part of the oratorio, after the interval. Here, the libretto is based largely on the nineteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings and we encounter what Mendelssohn described as the “brooding” Elijah. 

 

Queen Jezebel, furious that her priests have been slain, vows that Elijah will face the same fate. 

 

The strong, confident prophet is terrified. He abandons his servant and flees alone into the wilderness, begging God to let him die. This time it is an angel, not a raven, that brings him food - twice. Enough to sustain him for forty days and forty nights. Elijah walks up Mount Horeb - another name for Sinai, where Moses encountered God in a burning bush and received the Ten Commandments. 

 

After spending the night in a cave Elijah hears God asking: ‘What are you doing here?’ Elijah explains that he has been faithful all his life and done everything he can to turn the Israelites away from false prophets - but he is still being pursued by those who worship the gods of Baal. He says he is the only faithful one left. 

 

God asks him to step outside the cave and Elijah finds the mountain engulfed by earthquake, wind and fire. Gods speaks to him again - a still, small voice in the silence which follows, repeating the question: “What are you doing here?” Elijah answers in the same way. 

 

This time God sends him back down the mountain and through the wilderness, assuring Elijah that he is not alone. God will raise up new Kings, there are seven thousand others who had remained faithful and that a new prophet - Elisha - is to be anointed in Elijah’s place. 

 

Mendelssohn’s oratorio remains especially popular amongst choral societies today. Some of us here may well have performed in it. The choral sections are particularly expressive, with the choir used to describe the revelation of God, including at the climax of Part One in the scene atop of Mount Carmel: 

 

“The fire descends from heav’n! The flames consume his off’ring! Before him your faces fall!”

 

And at the climax to Part Two on Mount Horeb, the chorus sings:

 

“Behold, God the Lord passed by! And a mighty wind rent the mountains around..”

 

Shelia Hayman, a distant relation, describes Mendelssohn’s genius as his ability to express joy in music. While the two parts of his oratorio reflect the two very different sides of Elijah’s character, Mendelssohn’s depiction of God – the one who is pure joy – is equally expressive in both parts – in the descent of fire and in the still small voice.

“What am I doing here”? - to coin a phrase we’ve heard twice this evening! What am I doing talking about Mendelssohn’s orchestration of Elijah tonight?

 

Well, I wonder if his approach can help us prepare for the forty days and forty nights that await us? Perhaps we might think of this time as waiting in an interval - after the great feasts of Christmas, The Epiphany and the Presentation but before the beginning of Lent?

In dramatizing the fullness of Elijah’s character in the second part of the oratorio - Mendelssohn highlights the importance of allowing space for us to do the same. To acknowledge that we are all more than our outward confidence and strength. That the season of Lent allows us to explore the other aspects of our character. A reminder that a successful Lent is not about how many days I have refrained from alcohol or the number of steps I’ve clocked up – but something much deeper.

And in depicting God as joy unbound, whether Elijah is high as a kite or down in the dumps, Mendelssohn helps us to remember that Lent is not a period we have to endure in order to earn the right to joy. But that the periods of what he called “brooding” are a natural part of the fulness of life on earth. And that through Jesus’s death on the cross, joy is an integral part of those.

 

Mendelssohn decried the one-dimensional public figures of his day. In his musical depiction of the life of Elijah perhaps he can inspire us to have a three-dimensional Lent.

Image : After The Fire Came a Gentle Whisper, Sieger Koder